Dinner at the Funeral Home

The Dinner:

Mia, Lisa, Jim, Kyle, and Susan are in the dining room. It’s a cavernous room, a dimly lit room with a high ceiling. Its walls are painted a strange banana yellow.

Susan stares blankly at the wall, and then ponders that every room in the house, even the hallways are painted various, mismatching colors; most of the colors aesthetically repugnant too. The color scheme is so off-putting, so woeful that she wonders if it’s deliberate, an attempt to intimidate or repel souls, living or dead.

In the center of the room, there’s a ridiculously long black marble-topped dinner table that has big brass candelabras on the tabletop. Susan has no intention to light the candles. There’s nothing romantic or special about this room or this house, she thinks.

Susan flicks her gaze and sees the murdered family’s portrait, an oil painting, hanging on the wall, but it disappears in seconds, and only a mottled spot of shadowy wall remains...

Awkwardly, they sit down to the absurdly long table, and a little chill blows in through the doorway, darkening the room. A hazy red cloud, about the size of an orb, appears over Jim’s head, like a halo, and Susan gapes at it, loses her breath. But the cloud disappears in seconds and Susan convinces herself it’s something to do with the porous lighting.

Susan had wanted to cook shrimp and spaghetti but had no mood for cooking and instead ordered pizzas.

Slices of pizza are distributed by Susan, and the family eats silently, each of them fastened to their phones, except for Jim, who taps his thick mangled fingers at his tablet. The family is a set of fixtures, all staring solemnly at their squares of light.

The only topic of discussion that arises is when Jim lifts his huge head, sniffs and mentions the burning smell. Susan replies that an incineration plant is close by. Jim denies that’s possible. He says he scouted the area. That there’s no incineration plant.

Susan opens a map on her phone, shows it to him. Jim retorts that the plant is too far off. It’s miles away.

“The weather patterns, dear,” she avers, before reaching for another slice of the pepperoni pizza.

“Damn weather patterns...” grumbles Jim, crinkling his nose and snorting. An intense hush of silence ensues.